The Four Color Media Monitor

Recently, Marvel began adding Roy Thomas alongside Lein Wein and Herb Trimpe as a co-creator of Wolverine. Forbes has taken to discussing all these details:

None of the people involved knew it at the time, but Wolverine was destined to become the most popular Marvel character of the past 50 years, down to the present day when he is co-headlining the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine movie and Disney’s breakout animated series X-Men ‘97. For decades, comics historians (and Marvel) have given official credit for the character’s creation to Wein and Romita, while noting the original contributions of Trimpe and Thomas, as well as the subsequent work of Chris Claremont, John Byrne, Frank Miller and others, who helped mold Wolverine into the compelling character and global icon he is today.

Recently, that changed, with Thomas’s name being added to the official creator credits, and many comics industry professionals popped their own claws, Wolverine-style, at the thought of it. The change in credits was first reported by longtime comic book editor Bobbie Chase related on her Facebook page over the weekend. She wrote:

“...my friend and Len Wein’s widow, Christine Valada, got a call from Marvel executive David Bogart, informing her that in the upcoming Wolverine & Deadpool movie (coming out this July), Roy Thomas will now be credited as the co-creator with Len Wein and John Romita Sr., and David said it’s a done deal. I was standing in Christine’s kitchen this past Sunday as she told me about the phone call. Of course Christine is seriously concerned about Len’s legacy. Len was profoundly important to the comic book industry, and that legacy is being changed for the worse, six years after his death.”

This set off a firestorm of controversy, with many comics professionals and creators chiming in to give a largely negative opinion of Thomas’s bid to get credit fifty years after the fact, when almost all of the people with direct knowledge of the situation are dead.

Well this sure sounds different from the time when historians were trying to persuade DC to give artist Bill Finger the proper credit for co-creating Batman with Bob Kane in 1939. And while it's not like Thomas hasn't ever done anything I disagree with, this is very disappointing to learn that, in contrast to the Finger issue, they're less sympathetic to Thomas, if he was instrumental as an editor in bringing about Wolverine's creation. Forbes interviewed Thomas, and his defense is as follows:

“This situation is unfortunate because I am only trying to finally get credit for something where the facts have been known for many years, and I’m being portrayed as a ghoul trying to rob the corpse of Len Wein for credit and money,” he said.

“First and foremost, this is not a financial issue. I’m not getting a penny, as far as I know, and it in no way takes away from whatever Len [Wein] and John [Romita]’s families may be getting, if anything. I don’t know what their financial arrangement is with Marvel. I’m already getting money from my other contributions to Marvel; I don’t need Wolverine money, thank you very much.” [...]

Thomas explained that, as editor-in-chief of Marvel in 1974, he first conceived of developing a Canadian character to include in the comics to broaden the appeal. “We had an international readership, and I had created international characters like [X-Men] Banshee and Sunfire before,” he said. “I had four requirements for the character: that he be named ‘Wolverine,’ be Canadian, be fierce because wolverines are fierce creatures, and that he be short, because superheroes are usually tall.”

Thomas said he wanted to introduce the character in The Incredible Hulk because the Hulk was one of the few Marvel characters not based in New York, and it would be more plausible to set the action in Canada. Thomas assigned the job to Wein, whom he described as “one of the company’s best writers,” confident that he would bring a unique spin to it. “I could have assigned it to a different writer using my four parameters and John [Romita’s] design. Wolverine would have been something different because it wasn’t Len writing it, but I still would have been co-creator.”

Though Thomas said there were no contemporary records or documents to substantiate this account and nearly everyone with firsthand knowledge is now deceased, he said he has been telling the same story for decades, including in a 1982 interview with Marvel staff comics historian Peter Sanderson, and that his collaborators Trimpe, Romita, and even occasionally Wein would corroborate it when asked. “Anyone who knows me knows I’ve never been shy about speaking up,” he said.

There are editors who've given rough layouts of an idea they'd like to have developed, and assign specific writers to realize said ideas. Thomas also spoke about this in Back Issue about a decade ago. I guess it's far from a surprise if the industrialists allegedly offended at giving Thomas some credit for Logan's introduction didn't have the energy to research that data as they did to lambast an imperfect but otherwise decent writer/editor who did his best to produce entertaining stories in his time, which of course, is a lot more than can be said for the PC ideologues running the asylum today.

Thomas also said he would not dream of taking credit for other characters that debuted when he was in charge, as he did not have a personal hand in shaping them. He also volunteered that one of the characters he is credited with co-creating, Marvel’s The Vision from his 1960s run on The Avengers, was done under similar circumstances, instigated by then-Marvel Editor-in-Chief Stan Lee. “They gave [me and artist John Buscema] the credit, and that makes sense, but if Stan wanted credit, I could have gladly shared it with him, as well as with Jack Kirby [who created the 1940s character on whom Thomas’s Vision is partly based]” he said.

No doubt, Lee gave similar assignments in all his time as editor/publisher, and they have the gall to obscure that data? For shame. At the end, Thomas reminds everybody of the Bill Finger topic:

Finally, expressing exasperation at the tenor of the online discussion, Thomas summed up that this is, for him – as both a creator and a comics historian – about setting the record straight. “If somebody created a character, whether its about money or not, they should be acknowledged,” he said. “It took longer than 50 years for [Batman co-creator] Bill Finger to finally share billing with Bob Kane. Just because it took a long time to get the real story out doesn’t make it untrue.”

On this, there's a point to be made that, if nobody had an issue with giving credit to Finger on Batman, why is it suddenly a problem when Thomas gets some on Wolverine? One can only wonder if this has something to do with how Finger is long gone, having passed away 5 decades ago, and thus incapable of making use of residuals, while Thomas is still around and could. Well that's just insulting to the intellect, and many of these same alleged pros likely never condemned DC for abusing Finger's other co-creation, Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott, turning him into a homosexual man a dozen years ago, something that's never been abandoned since. And they've likely never slammed DC for forcing the same component upon Obsidian from Infinity Inc, Thomas' own creation, even earlier, and all via one of the worst writers of the 1990s, Gerard Jones. What's the whole point of these attacks on Thomas, the veteran who had far more talent in his time, if they don't respect even Finger? It should be noted that despite all the attention given to Finger years ago on these issues, much of the Golden Age GL stories have yet to be reprinted, and even the aforementioned Infinity Inc. has yet to be reprinted in full to boot, along with possibly a few extra stories in the early 90s featuring some of the characters.

Now to conclude, Thomas is clearly not seeking to diminish any residuals to Wein's widow, let alone take away any creative credit from the guy who's also famous for creating Swamp Thing. So it would do a lot of good if anybody who's putting on a now classic display of ungratefulness would apologize to Thomas for attacking him with a complete lack of altruism. I guess because Thomas doesn't meet their PC standards, that's why they're hostile to him. And that's a terrible shame.

And as for "global, compelling icon", and most popular character, have the writers at Forbes paid attention where Marvel's been going these days? Hard to say Logan's still iconic any more than Spider-Man after all the woke directions Marvel's taken since the turn of the century.

Labels: dc comics, good artists, good writers, Green Lantern, history, Hulk, marvel comics, msm propaganda, X-Men